Public Information Online is a searchable database providing access to official publications from UK legislative bodies and governments. It includes full-text documents from the UK Parliament, Scottish Parliament, Scottish Government, Northern Ireland Assembly, Welsh Senedd, and selected non-parliamentary sources.
UK Parliament documents, include:
• House of Commons and House of Lords Papers (from 2006/07 and 1901 respectively).
• Public Bills, Explanatory Notes, Command Papers, Acts, and Statutory Instruments.
• Hansard (from 1803 for Commons and 1909 for Lords).
• Committee reports, financial statements, and other parliamentary proceedings.
Scottish Parliament coverage starts from Session 3 (May 2007) onwards and includes legislative and procedural documents such as:
• Bills (public and private), Explanatory Notes, Policy Memorandums, and Financial Memorandums.
• Official Reports (debates), Minutes of Proceedings, Written Answers, and Committee Reports.
• Business Bulletins and Marshalled Lists of amendments.
• Full texts of Acts and accompanying explanatory materials.
Scottish Government publications, available from 2009 onwards include:
• Annual reports, consultations, and research findings.
• Documents spanning diverse policy areas such as education, health, environment, justice, and economics.
Useful for: All disciplines - especially Education, Government & Public Policy, Law, Politics, Social Work & Social Policy.
On the home page, you can perform a simple search for a parliamentary paper by title or paper number.
In the left-hand column of the advanced search screen you can specify Parliament, Session and Category (e.g. type of paper). The default option selects all parliaments, sessions and categories.
Enter your search terms in the relevant box:
If appropriate, select the corporate author from the drop-down menu.
If you know the paper number (e.g. HC 128) you can enter this in the ‘Title, ISBN, Paper Number’ box.
You can limit the date range by selecting the appropriate dates from the ‘Date From’ and ‘Date To’ boxes.
Select how you wish the results to be displayed from the ‘Sort Order’ drop-down menu (i.e. ‘Alphabetical’, ‘Categorical’, ‘Chronological’).
Select the ‘Search’ button.
Records indicate the date, paper series and number, and title of the document.
The search results page also offers the option to:
Follow the relevant links to use these features.
Select the title to view the full-text of a document .
On the next page you can select options to Download or view Associated Papers.
Public Information Online offers a range of connectors and other syntax symbols which can be used in searches. These include:
Boolean operators must be CAPITALISED. The OR operator is the default conjunction operator. This means that if there is no Boolean operator between two terms, the OR operator is used. The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document.
For more help select 'Help' towards the top of any PIO page.
On the home page, in the black menu bar you can follow links to ‘UK Parliament’, ‘Scottish Parliament’, ‘Scottish Government’, etc.
You can then follow links to specific categories of publication.*
After following the link to category of publication, you can select the session from the drop-down menu and then select the ‘FILTER’ button.
You can then browse documents by selecting a range of paper numbers (e.g. 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, etc.).
A list of relevant documents is displayed in the main frame.
Select the title to view the full-text of a document .
On the next page you can select options to Download or view Associated Papers.
*For example, under ‘UK Parliament’ links include ‘House of Commons Papers’, ‘House of Commons Bills’, ‘House of Lords Papers’, ‘House of Lords Bills and Amendments’, ‘Command Papers’, ‘HOC Daily Hansards’ and ‘HOL Daily Hansards’; under ‘Scottish Parliament’ links include ‘Papers’, ‘Bills’, ‘Explanatory Notes to Bills’, ‘Policy Memorandums to Bills’, ‘Official Reports’, ‘Written Answers’, ‘Official Reports of Committee Debates’; and under ‘Scottish Government’ are links to ‘SG Papers’ and documents grouped by topic.
Use this to follow the progress of a Bill through the UK or Scottish Parliaments:
Select the title to view the full-text of a document. On the next page you can select options to Download or view Associated Papers.
You can get help with using Public Information Online by selecting ‘Help’ in the grey menu bar at the top of the screen.
